New Beginnings, New Experiences in a New City

I feel like I never really get know a place until I mingle with local people in local spots full of their character and filled by their personalities. And here I am sitting in the corner in it among them.

The staff of three, one is the owner, flow around the space, from the counter and kitchen, serving the six small tables and the four sofas that are set up so two oppose each other, with two coffee tables in the middle. Two of the sofas and a coffee table are outside the open front front of the shop and on the sidewalk. They speak with each other and those who enter in both French and English. Music plays at a comfortable listening volume setting the tone and ambiance - chill.

Today it's a balmy Thursday summer day here in Paris, France. I am sitting in a little cafe just up the street from the hotel I am staying in, having just enjoyed an omelet and buttered toast. I'm sipping orange juice from a ceramic cup while everyday neighborhood life is happening all around me.

I had planned to go to the Louvre today, but after eight hours of walking all of the Musée d'Orsay yesterday, two there and back, and six inside, I decided to take respite. I did just see some bucket list artworks - Vincent Van Gogh's portrait, Degas' La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans, Aurearea by Gauguin, and Manet's

Olympia (and many more) - and they really deserve to be given a longer moment to all be reflected upon.

For in that reflection, the wonder and enjoyment of those first-time experience double. And my still aching feet and legs greatly need more of a break.

I had set out at eight-thirty that morning and arrived by ten. I would have arrived in an hour but the preparations for the Olympic Games in the in the Place de la Concorde are well underway. It and the two gardens on either side, the Jardin des Champs-Élysées and Jardin de Tuileries were all fenced off. The streets leading to them were all guarded by the French police redirecting foot traffic.

This small strip of street art by an unknown artist speaks to me, and not just because it is clay tiles. Clearly, this was a repair of broken pavement, which is not a new concept, invoking the Japanese philosophy of kintsugi. Rather than tax money spent on city street works repaving the entire section, they added a little magic.

I didn't have any dessert with my dinner that evening but this feast for the eyes was a delicate tasty treat feeding my soul.

The ceramic art I have seen here in the first day and a half has been both delightful and unexpected. Of the three dozen or so clay pieces, two have stood out - Pot anthropomorphe, which is also known as the Portrait of Gauguin in the Shape of a Grotesque Head, and some small tiles inlaid on the sidewalk near the restaurant I had dinner at two nights ago.

have to learn different social behaviours and customs, are in a completely different environment to all that was familiar to him and her, among people who are not birth mother or father, but strangers who look nothing like oneself and the expectation is to call them those words, maybe you can understand why the perception of oneself would be so terribly skewed.

To quote Gauguin about his dark and tortured alter ego represented in this self-portrait, he was "a poor devil hunched up to endure his suffering".

Gauguin's issues were not the same as mine, other than of one's own self-perception supported by the opinions of others spoken aloud. But for those twenty years, I felt like a poor suffering devil growing up Asian and adopted in White Christian America.

I hadn't known that this clay self-portrait existed. This glazed stoneware pot resonates deeply with me, reminding me of my own perception of myself for about twenty years of my life, from age two-and-a-half to twenty-one. When a human being grows up looking completely different to everyone around him or her,

While reading online more about Gaguin, I came across this informative blog post written by Austin Jantzi analyzing Gauguin and his artworks, mainly his self-portrait, this vessel and it lends some considerable insight.

personal conversation. So often websites can feel like one-way streets of communication. And with online conversations tending to be public and less private these days, I often see and have participated in conversations that shoot off in unrelated directions. Or they simply degenerate into the unappealing with someone trying to "win" instead of understanding that two people can still civilly discuss something, disagree entirely, and still even be friends.

Personally, I'm hungering for this style of communication. To speak one's opinion bravely and without fear, which recent online socializing has left so many less willing to do. And maybe it's me yearning for the days of my youth when letter-writing was still the main way of written commication. For me, writing down my thoughts is a way to untangle, organize and clarify. Much like knowing the outcome before it happens in a short story I recently read, Story of Your Life written by Ted Chiang, I know what I will write before I commit it to paper - knowing the future, the past, actualizing it all in the Now, and free will.

New Hat Vibes

I've received some more lovely and constructive feedback about the new website and first diary entry. I was so glad to hear it because my hope was for what I share to create the opportunity for a dialogue of some sort for those who are interested in having a

and ability to hold it horizontally or vertically for better viewing in response to the shape of the images and videos. The laptop computer is woefully limited in this regard. I make all my little short films, videos, and currently take and edit photos on my Samsung SR23 Ultra. Arguably, some would say, a camera phone is inferior to a traditional camera and digital camera for capturing moments. I have long believed that the best camera is the one that you have one you at that moment when you want to take a picture of that thing that's happening.

Another bit of feedback was that some of the text in my little films are difficult to read and don't supply enough information. I've done that on purpose to give you an opportunity to look more closely, watch it again, provide an opportunity for a question to be asked to begin a conversation. We live in an information era and that sometimes takes the mystery and intrigue out of things. I believe that a life without the aforementioned is a life lived lacking wonder and magic. I'm not just making a website and writing a diary entry, I am casting a spell, but it's really up to you whether to be enchanted.

Here is another peek at one of my current many works in process, more of the one I shared in my last diary entry.

Another thing I wanted to have with this diary and website, is for it to be as beautifully viewed on the electronic device that most people are using, a mobile phone. Not just a laptop computer. I would say that the website is maybe even a little better on the mobile than on the laptop because of their high resolution screens

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A friend has been telling me for ages to write a book, a memoir, of all my wild past-life experiences. Maybe I'll write a book about my life when I'm older, maybe around 80 (if I am blessed to live that long). I've decided to keep this diary instead.

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